for some reason my serial.available is acting really funny, it wont print the line Serial.print("serial avail passed val: "); but it seems to be receiving data...in some way because I can see the serial monitor reacting to processing program when I run it. It seems that serial.available() is just not passing and returning 0 or null. any idea?

for some reason my serial.available is acting really funny, it wont print the line Serial.print("serial avail passed val: "); but it seems to be receiving data...in some way because I can see the serial monitor reacting to processing program when I run it. It seems that serial.available() is just not passing and returning 0 or null. any idea?

I can't make sense of that, probably because you are mistaken about what Serial.available() is supposed to do. Serial.available() doesn't print anything, does not receive data, does not pass or return anything written to or read from the stream.

What are you trying to do?

I only provide help via the forum - please do not contact me for private consultancy.

ah, I thought it returns number a length of items that where being sent. If nothing is sending then imagined it returned 0 or null and something sent it was greater than 1 hence true and that statement would pass. I've seen that Serial.available() in example files, so I guess I am confused on how to use it then...?

according to: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Serial/Availablewhen I say data I have sent, I mean data I have sent from processing to arduino, just to be clear. I send data over to processing no problem, its getting it back after I have modified that data that is the problem. It's hard to monitor too, because Arduino IDE seems to initialize the serial monitor on top of the Processing, so I get double data.

Perhaps I have misunderstood your problem, then. Serial.available() tells you how many bytes are waiting to be received. These would be bytes send from your Processing application to the Arduino which the sketch has not read yet.

You can only have one thing writing to and reading from each end of the Serial connection, so if you have a Processing application accessing it, you must not use the Arduino serial monitor at the same time.

I only provide help via the forum - please do not contact me for private consultancy.

Perhaps I have misunderstood your problem, then. Serial.available() tells you how many bytes are waiting to be received. These would be bytes send from your Processing application to the Arduino which the sketch has not read yet.

You can only have one thing writing to and reading from each end of the Serial connection, so if you have a Processing application accessing it, you must not use the Arduino serial monitor at the same time.

ok sure. So the problem persists. Been at it for some time now. It seems like arduino just isn't receiving the data correctly, which makes me think I am sending it to arduino wrong. If I open a serial port to receive data in processing, would I have to open a new one to send it? or can I just use same port.

In your code you only seem to be trying to read from the Serial port when the distance reading is in range. I don't know why you're doing that - is it deliberate? Do you know that the value actually is in range? You need to know what's going on inside your sketch, and to understand that you really need to know what it's outputting to the Serial port and what your Processing application is writing to it.

For simplicity while testing, you could set the Processing application aside and use the Arduino serial monitor to send input to the Arduino and display whatever the Arduino outputs.

I only provide help via the forum - please do not contact me for private consultancy.

data[counter] = String(serialDataIn);The serialDataIn variable is already a String. There is no reason to make another String instance, and then invoke the copy constructor on that instance, and then delete that instance. That is just uselessly gambling with an already dodgy class.

it compiles with no errors on my end. I will look into String thing, but I think its more of a format issue. I am receiving data in bytes and need to convert it to an int by subtracting 0. Will try both solutions tonight.

First, the line ' //}' seems weird, with the comment marks it does NOT compile. Taking out the '//' compiles ok.

Next, does it actually print the "length" string? If x is not inside your range, nothing is done, whatever you receive.

Then, the line 'float distance = analogRead(1);', again hmm, analogRead returns a int, not a float. Not critical, but not clean.

But, most critical, you are not looping yourself, but using the Arduino background code to repeatedly call loop(). This means you are not in full control over what the system is doing. Even in the Arduino the microcontroller 'rule' the main function never exits is still a good one to follow.

Now, i am not sure, but it looks like the serial buffer is reset upon entering loop().

If i place the main block in a while(true) { .. } loop, it seems to work; at least it sees the incoming data etc.

Oh, and finally, the lines // say what you got: Serial.print("I received: "); Serial.println(incomingByte, DEC);make no sense, inComingByte is initialise to 0 and never set.